


a word that sometimes you cannot say

by Lleavingwonderland



Series: a word that sometimes you cannot say [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Fix-It, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Percy finally goes back home after BoO, Post-Tartarus (Percy Jackson), Post-The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus), background percabeth and a heaping order of familial feelings, ok more like hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24756439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lleavingwonderland/pseuds/Lleavingwonderland
Summary: "He wants to have words that make this all ok. He wants to be able to tell her with a clear conscience that he was saving the world, out on hero business. That somehow it was worth it. But it wasn’t. He had been carrying the burden of the world since he was twelve years old. He was tired. And he was hurt. It’s not ok.“Mom…” He runs a calloused hand over the tears on his cheek, and into his unruly hair. “Can you come get me? I want…I’m ready to come home.”"or the Percy&Sally reunion that we were so cruelly denied at the end of HoO
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson & Sally Jackson
Series: a word that sometimes you cannot say [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826383
Comments: 17
Kudos: 296





	a word that sometimes you cannot say

Percy turns Annabeth’s phone over in his hands. There’s no reason for him to be nervous about making this call.There’s no reason that his mother wouldn’t answer the phone. There’s no reason that she would respond in any way but welcoming him home. There’s no way she would be unhappy to hear from him. But he hasn’t seen her since December. Since she dropped him off at camp, stopping the banged up Prius at the base of half-blood hill, where he climbed out, grabbed his bag out of the trunk and knocked on the roof before walking up the familiar path, looking over his shoulder to wave and call back “Love you, too”. 

He was only supposed to be gone four days, a long weekend of Christmas break, not eight months, six of which he didn’t even remember her for. He feels even more shattered and irreparable than he did in Alaska in June, choking out words over a pay phone to her answering machine. 

He doesn’t even have to recall the number this time, his hand is hovering over “Sally” in Annabeth’s contacts. 

She doesn’t know anything. And he owes it to her to tell her everything that happened, but he doesn’t want to have to pry back open this chest full of hurt. He just wants to let it lie. He wants to let it all go. 

He wants to go home.

He presses call.

She picks up on the first ring. “Annabeth? Is everything ok?”

Just hearing her voice makes a knot form in his throat that he’s not sure he’ll be able to talk over. How can he explain this? How is he gonna be able to apologize for this?

He blinks tears, hot and cloudy, out of his eyes and down his cheeks.

“Mom,” he barely whispers. “It’s me.”

“Percy, oh my god, where are you? Are you ok? Are you safe?”

“I’m ok. I’m ok,” he says because he doesn’t want her to worry. Because he doesn’t want to talk on the phone and explain it all then put it down and go on. Because he didn’t call her to give her an update. “I’m back at camp. We—we got back yesterday.”

He cringes when he says it, hoping she won’t be angry about the delay in calling. They were in the middle of a civil war and clean up had gone well into the night.

“Thank the gods,” she says. Percy can’t tell if she’s giddy with emotion or on the verge of breaking. “What happened, Percy?”

He wants to respond. He wants to have words that make this all ok. He wants to be able to tell her with a clear conscience that he was saving the world out on hero business. That somehow it was worth it. But it wasn’t. He had been carrying the burden of the world since he was twelve years old. He was tired. And he was hurt. It’s not ok. Not for him, losing his time and his safety and his sanity. Not to her, losing her only son and nearly not getting him back.

“Mom…” He runs a calloused hand over the tears on his cheek, and into his unruly hair. 

“Can you come get me? I want…I’m ready to come home.”

He feels like a kid calling his mom from the bathroom of a party he doesn’t want to be at anymore. Can you come pick me up? I want to go home. I’m not having fun anymore. 

“I’m getting my keys right now,” she says, her voice turned steely and protective. “Paul,” he hears her pull the phone away to yell for his step-dad, “Paul, Percy’s home.”

Home. He waits quietly on his end of the line.

“I’m on my way, baby,” she says to him. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” he manages to whisper. 

He can’t bear to end the call so he stays on the line with the phone pressed to his cheek for the few seconds of silence before it clicks off from her end.

His mom is coming.

He’s going home.

It’s actually over now.

It feels too good to be true. Camp had felt like a second home to him for so long, but now that he was back even after such an ordeal he still felt unsettled, like he didn’t quite belong here anymore. He missed an entire summer session. And he wasn’t sure he would want a bead to remember this quest, this was one he would rather forget. 

He knows he needs to get up—to find Annabeth and return her phone, to tell Chiron he’s leaving early, probably say goodbye to his quest mates. He takes a deep breath and brushes the rest of the tears away, puts on a brave face.

The drive from the upper east side to the north shore of long Island normally takes an hour and a half, not accounting for traffic, but Percy is sitting at the base of Thalia’s tree in 45 minutes. He’s ready. The bags beside him are a strange amalgam of things he packed for camp in December, things Annabeth put into the Argo for him, and things he acquired at Camp Jupiter. It’s a couple of backpacks and a duffle bag, he’d carried it all over himself and thrown it down. 

Part of him feels guilty for leaving, for leaving Annabeth. She had accepted her phone back, quietly slipping it into her pocket and taken the news in silence. She just nodded. She knew better than anyone what his mom had been through, how hard it was on her, and how ready Percy was to go see her again. She didn’t have that level of fidelity to her own parents, either of them. She knew Percy better than anyone, she knew where this was going the second she handed him her phone. It doesn’t mean either of them isn’t nervous about being separated, especially overnight, but it has to happen. He promises to call her, he doesn’t need to promise not to do anything dangerous—the cuts all over their bodies and the bruise-dark circles under their eyes belie how tired they both are. Neither of them will be running into danger any time soon. He’s glad of that, he just wishes it didn’t have to happen like this.

He’s hardly been sitting down for 10 minutes when he sees a car coming down the road. Gods know how fast she drove and what kind of traffic laws were broken in the process. Something turns to stone in his stomach as he stares down at the prominent bones in his hands. He suddenly doesn’t want her to see him like this—like he is.

But there’s no time for any of that because before the car is even stopped at the base of the hill the passenger door flies open and—

“Percy?”

He stands up slowly like he’s in a trance and stumbles a few steps down the hill to collide with his running mom. She’s a full head shorter than him but she crushes him in a hug with all the ferocity of a mother’s love. He wraps his arms around her and feels like something rock solid inside him just vanished: he’s a hundred pounds lighter but he’s also hollow. 

He hugs her like she’ll vanish if he doesn’t. 

He realizes she’s crying, not just crying, sobbing into his shirt. 

“Mom,” he says, “It’s ok, Mom, I’m back.”

He can’t stand to see her cry, not like this, uncontrollable sadness, overwhelmed. He hates that he is the reason for it. 

She still has her arms locked around him, and he finally, for the first time in months, lets his guard down. He just lets himself be held. 

Paul parks the car and joins them long enough to clasp Percy’s shoulder and say “I’m glad you’re home”, before going to get Percy’s bags.

“Mom,” he tries to speak again, pulling back, but not letting go, so as to meet her eyes. “Mom, I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

Part of him thinks he’s in for a Percy Jackson You’re Too Reckless Always Running Off On Quests Speech, or even worse a Why Didn’t You Call My Heart Can’t Take It, but he gets neither. She shakes her head without saying anything, holding him at arms length and studying his face like it’s changed since she last saw it, which it probably has. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “All that matters is that you’re back now, ok?”

He nods. “Can we go home?” he asks, because he wants it. It almost hurts how bad he wants it.

She lets him go long enough for him to hug Paul, who gets back in the driver’s seat, then Percy climbs in the back. It’s been months since he’s been in a car. It just all feels so strange, even something as familiar as the snap of the seat belt buckle.

He’s spent so long on guard, so long with his weapon drawn on high alert, so long convincing himself that it was all up to him now, he had to be the protector, he had to be the hero, he had to be strong and invincible and prepared, that sitting in the back seat of his parents’ sedan is just too much. He starts shaking. He doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t understand, his mind is blank, and he can’t tell the difference between relief and terror anymore. Most of his emotions feel like terror now. Love feels like terror of loss and relief feels like terror of it shattering and the deep black sadness blooming under his skin feels like terror that it’s only going to get bigger and worse. He’s shaking all over. His hands are trembling and his eyes won’t focus right and—

His mom looks back at him from the passenger seat and wordlessly gets out of the car and sits next to him in the back. As Paul pulls back out onto the road she gathers Percy in her arms, all of her own tears gone and forgotten now, like he’s six again and skinned his knee. 

She smooths his hair and draws him close enough to start crying on her shoulder. “It’s all gonna be ok, baby,” she says quietly, “You’re home now. I got you.”

And this exact moment feels like the terror of waking up and not knowing who he is and the terror of almost dying and the terror of it all inevitably happening again. 

The tears start.

And they come and they come and they come until they can’t anymore and until they’re almost home.

Paul parallel parks the car just down from their building. Percy stands on the sidewalk and stares and stares. At all the cars. At the people on the sidewalk. At the endless buildings reaching up into the sky. This city is a part of him. He must have missed it too, more than he knew to realize. He breathes in air that could hardly be characterized as fresh and tries to let himself believe he’s home. He’s here to stay.

Percy drops his bags on the floor of his bedroom. He doesn’t even move he just looks around, like touching anything or stepping suddenly will shatter the illusion. It’s all just as he left it. His mom hadn’t even let dust accumulate on the shelves. 

His mom walks in behind him, wordlessly standing in the doorway. Maybe she can’t quite believe he’s inhabiting this space again either.

“It’s just like I left it.”

She nods, looking at him carefully. “Do you want to unpack? Clean up? I’ll cook dinner, anything and everything you want.”

He has to smile but even he knows it’s weak, nothing like the splitting grins and laughter she’s used to. It’s barely a lift to the corners of his mouth. “Ok,” he says.

“And, Percy, I don’t know what happened. But whenever you’re ready to talk about it you know you can talk to me.”

He nods, his throat knotting up again. He has a headache from crying. And from not eating. And he’s probably dehydrated.

He’s definitely not ready to open his mouth and unleash the horrors onto his mom. He doesn’t even want to think about them again, much less describe in detail the acrid air of Tartarus and the look of Annabeth as a corpse and the heart-stopping anxiety of living on the streets of California with no identity. He had lost the curse of achilles. He had looked Death in the face. He had nearly drowned twice. He hadn’t even turned seventeen yet. 

He is so tired.

He takes tylenol. He takes a shower. He takes a long look at himself in the mirror and sees prominent ribs and hip bones that jut out under his skin and the points of his collar bone and his shoulder blades. Not to mention the scars. New ones that collected like dust on his once-again-vulnerable skin. 

He feels a sort of detached shock and concern about all this. That this is very wrong and he is malnourished from the fiery waters of the Phlegethon. He hides his bones under an old band t-shirt that is neither purple nor orange. 

He feels hungry. 

He feels tired.

He steps out of the bathroom to the smell of frying-something and joins his mom and Paul in the kitchen. It’s so incredibly normal: the three of them crammed into their tiny New York apartment kitchen. Percy had been cooking with his mom since he was small, helping out chopping vegetables or passing spices from the cabinet. It was an almost intimate ritual that Paul had been reluctantly invited into at first but now he had earned his place. He wasn’t a bad cook in his own right, but as with most things and most people, he was nothing next to Sally. He didn’t ever seem to mind though. 

Percy was suddenly very glad that Paul was here, that he had been here. The thought of Sally Jackson cooking alone in her apartment waiting for Percy to reappear for months on end was a terrible thought. Paul was a good guy. And he was good for her. 

Percy eats his massive dinner like a starving man, which he is, only slowing down after thirds, beyond comforted to eat food that he could see being prepared, that didn’t just magically appear from the ether when summoned. This food was real and tactile and filled the whole apartment with the aroma. It smelled like home.

They spend the rest of the evening all three of them piled onto the couch in the living room, alternately watching TV and muting it to say something. Things like “Wait when does school start, Paul?” and “I’ll still have to finish out sophomore year” and “We’ll figure something out” and “I want to graduate on time” and “I’ll talk to the department heads”. Things like “I still have to get my full license” and “We can get the test scheduled”. Things that he missed piling back up the longer he sits still.

It’s strange how quickly he can slip back into mortality—that things like the sound of a seat belt set him staring but talk of schools and graduation comes back from complete obscurity to perfect clarity. He had been gone but he was not lost, and not without hope.

He falls asleep faster than he had expected to. He spoke to Annabeth on the phone, half of it charged silences and the need to be pressed beside her and hold her hand. Things were calm at camp. She was going to stay until she moved into her school for the year. She didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

“I love you,” he says, because he doesn’t have the other, better words that he needs to tell her how he feels.

“I love you, too,” she says, likewise.

“I’ll see you soon.”

And he does, too soon, behind his eyelids when he gets dragged back to Tartarus. 

He’s awake before his mind is, and his training does what it’s supposed to. You get into a combat situation and your reflexes take over. You can start defending yourself, jumping into practiced stances and drawing weapons before you have time to think it all through. It can save your life, those first few seconds responding quickly to an attack can make a difference in survival or injury. The problem is when your mind decides you’re in peril when you’re not. When your danger response gets activated and without knowing any better you’re fully armed scanning for a threat in an otherwise empty bedroom.

Percy’s chest is heaving when he finally convinces himself it was just a nightmare, but only after he’s walked the entire apartment and checked the locked door and hallway outside and then collapses back onto his bed, sword still drawn, trying to convince his heart to slow down and not explode in his chest. He needs fresh air. He can’t breathe in here, in the stifling August heat. So he shoves his old heavy window open and climbs out onto the fire escape, balancing on the old metal, thick with paint that’s chipping in places. He would cap Riptide but he doesn’t want to be caught unprepared. It’s dark outside, as dark as it ever gets in the city, which is nothing compared to the mediterranean at night, but still not near as unsettling as the constant red glow of tartarus, a 24 hour half light. No proper waking or sleeping. No rest for the wicked.

On high alert with his senses dialed to eleven, he hears his mom as soon as she steps into his room. 

“Percy, is everything ok? What are you doing out there?” Her eyes are squinted with sleep, she walks cautiously over to the window.

He means to say yes, but he shakes his head and says “‘m fine.”

She reaches out and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder. He flinches. 

He doesn’t even bother looking up at her face; he can feel the concern and fearfulness coming off her. She sits down on the inside of the windowsill.

“What’s wrong, baby?” she asks again.

“I just had a nightmare.” He doesn’t look away from the street below, his gaze fixed safely on a hole in the sidewalk down the block. His mom knows all about demigod nightmares. Part of him wants her to assume it was a run of the mill occurrence. The other part of him opens his mouth before he can stop, “about what happened. While I was gone.”

He hadn’t meant to wake her. He should have been more careful. He just needed to make sure they were safe. He couldn’t stand feeling helpless. He couldn’t stand the idea of putting his mom and Paul in danger. He also couldn’t stand the thought of the look on her face if he really told her. He also couldn’t stand keeping this from her. He felt like he was splitting in half down the middle, cracking up from the inside, stress fractures in an old building about to crumble.

She didn’t push. She just sat there silently, watching him, tense primed to strike with a glowing sword and a battlefield stare. 

He looks for words to explain. For a place to start. It all ended in Tartarus. It was the start and end of this tale. It was the reason he was sitting on a fire escape and not just rolling over to return to sleep after a nightmare.

“We went—we fell—I couldn’t let her go alone. I couldn’t.”

“It’s ok,” his mom says, steady as ever, hand on his shoulder.

He closes his eyes and swallows back the terror like bile and makes himself whisper “Tartarus” which brings shivers even on a humid summer night.

He risks a look at his mom, sees her putting together the pieces.

“There was a pit. In Rome. Arachne and. And I couldn’t let her go. Not alone.” 

“You and Annabeth?” she asks.

He just nods. Mouth dry, mind a mix of horror film and tv static.

“Percy, look at me.”

He does.

“You are so brave. And I am so proud of you. So so proud.”

She pulls him into another hug and holds him while his heart rate slows back down. His sword clatters out of his hand.

“It’s ok,” she says. “It’s gonna be ok.”

But it’s not. He’s not ok. The last eight months are not ok. And his mom has on her brave face but she is not ok. He feels like a little kid again, tiny, helpless, lost in a world made for people bigger than him. His mom anchors him down, still. He doesn’t want to hurt her. The cracks running through him deepen, threatening collapse. Her hands are tracing calming circles on his back and he’s staring at her hair in the orange glow of a nearby streetlight and he says “Mom, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You don’t have to, baby,” she tells him. “You’ve fought your battles.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want—I’m so tired.”

“You’re safe now. You can rest now.”

He wants to believe her so badly.

It’s three in the morning but he borrows her phone to text Annabeth and she doesn’t ask why. 

It’s not elaborate but he can’t sleep until he knows.

Annabeth responds within five minutes. She’s ok.

Percy exhales. Lays back on his bed. Imagines a day when she won’t be a call away, when he’ll be able to fall asleep to the sound of her breathing every night. 

The next afternoon Paul comes back in from a half day preparing for the school year and says he spoke to the principal. He’s willing to set Percy up with tutoring and the guidance counselors to finish the required classes he missed last semester, the electives can be exempted in special circumstances. It won’t be easy, but Percy can make up the time without getting held back if he puts in the work. He doesn’t have much time to decide, school starts in a week.

“I’ll do it,” Percy says, thinking back to what Annabeth said—about college together an an apartment. He can’t get held back when that’s what’s waiting for him. 

“And you won’t disappear on anymore dangerous quests?” Paul asks. Percy can’t tell if he’s serious or not. It doesn’t matter, even if it was a joke it wouldn’t have been funny. “No,” he says, “I promise. All that…it’s over it really is. I just want to graduate high school. I thought….I thought this would have ended last year. I just keep getting pulled back into it.”

“But not anymore?”

“Not anymore.” Percy agrees. 

Paul nods. Tells him he can go in the next day to meet with the principal and set up his locker for the year. 

And for once Percy is glad about that.

They reheat leftovers from the previous night and eat on the couch, watching movies. Percy hasn’t watched a movie since December, it wasn’t something he missed while he was fighting for his life, but it’s nice to lay out on the couch safe and comfortable, his biggest worries being the obvious plot-holes and terrible cgi in Aquaman. His parents, the novelist and the english teacher, demolish the plot and poke holes in character development. Percy decides to be offended on behalf of all ocean deities that this film was ever made.

He spills popcorn on the floor and falls asleep halfway through the third movie of the night and doesn’t wake up until the sunrise starts shining fingers of light through the blinds. He looks around, well rested, delirious, aware that he just slept more than 6 hours through a night for the first time in…he doesn’t even remember how long.

He lays there enjoying the close silence and the far away sounds of the city until his mom gets up to make coffee before work.

He’s home. 

He’s finally, finally home. 

**Author's Note:**

> fic title from 'tokyo' by RM


End file.
